Russia's first Winter Olympics opens this week in Sochi, the spectacular southern Black Sea resort in the shadow of the Caucasus Mountains. The Games, the most expensive in history, are taking place 34 years after Moscow (then the capital of the Soviet Union) held its first Summer Olympics. For all that Olympics are intended to be an apolitical event dedicated to athletic competition, they have a way of laying bare political realities, particularly in dictatorial societies.

That is how it was in Moscow in 1980. That is how it is in Sochi in 2014. So much the better.

For any nation, hosting an Olympics feeds national pride. But moments in history can give them added significance. In 1980, at the height of the U.S.-Soviet Cold War, the Moscow Olympics had an extra message. The Soviet Union wanted them to be a showcase of superpower pride.

Now, in 2014, Putin intends the Games to make an updated 21st century point: Russia is back, and strong, after the setbacks following the collapse of the Soviet Union a quarter century ago.

But Olympic Games make less-than-democratic leaders confront realities they would rather ignore. The world makes judgments that speak uncomfortable truths to their power.

Influence of boycott

The 1980 Moscow Olympics fell flat when the United States and some others boycotted the Games to protest the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The shock waves that sent through Soviet society showed the limits of Big Brother controls as the aging Politburo tried to cover it up. It was one of the defining moments that helped push the Soviet Union toward its collapse a decade later.

More recently, China's communist leadership had to face the world's criticism at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Those Games were intended as a coming out party after decades of self-imposed isolation. But China's leadership also had to face criticism of its censorship and political repression. As with Moscow in 1980, it could in time turn out to have helped push China toward greater openness and democracy.

Putin has gone out of his way to take some sting out of these issues. He released former opponent Mikhail Khodorkovsky and the singers of the group Pussy Riot, who had dared to mock him, from Siberian jails. He insists the Olympics have cost a mere $6.5 billion, not the real figure of $50 billion and counting. But try as he might, he cannot make all realities disappear. Russian activists, for example, are tracking and publicizing the true cost of the Games and the corruption linked to Putin allies.

The Olympics should be intended as competition and inspiration. The Games should, and need to be, a spectacular event, not one marred by the kind of tragedy of the 1972 Munich Olympics when Palestinian terrorists murdered Israeli athletes.

That said, Putin's dictatorially inclined leadership can benefit from the political truths the Games are making him face. Already, the critical documentary Putin's Games depicts them as his lavish vanity project.

In 1980, a Moscow Olympics joke crystallized how Russians began to see their leaders. In the joke, communist leader Leonid Brezhnev read his Opening Ceremony speech. "Oh," he began, "oh, oh, oh." A fellow Politburo member nudged him. "Comrade Brezhnev, you are reading the circles of the Olympic symbol."

Wanted now: similarly incisive Putin jokes.

Louise Branson, former Moscow correspondent for the London Sunday Times,was at the 1980 Moscow Olympics. A past USA TODAY editorial writer and current member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors, she is completing an international thriller.